Meet my friends
The bird in the picture is Puki. She is a Pukeko, a native bird from New Zealand. We rescued her after she was attacked by a big dog. Her leg was broken. You can read about her in my second book “The Wounded Bird”
Fern is my BEST friend! She always comes with me on my adventures, because she thinks I will get in trouble. Fern can do MAGIC with her hand. she can think of something and then it pops up in her palm. Real cool. I wish I had some MAGIC too but I am still too young. I still have to do good deeds Fern says. And then my MAGIC will appear by itself. I hope that will happen soon so I try to help everywhere I can.
Fern always helps me when I am sad. She cheers me up with games and songs. She has a beautiful voice and I love all her songs .
Fern likes to keep all the ferns real tidy and green. she spends a lot of time watering the little ones when there is a drought.
Muddum is a bit of a weird Bushbuddy., She can’t walk anymore. She is too old. When Bushbuddies get old they fade away into their own bush or tree. Muddum just fades into the ground, actually really stuck. She looks really ugly and grubby now, but once she was a beautiful young bushbuddy and she could sing pretty good. I didn’t believe that at first but Rata and I saw it in Rata’s time-viewer. She is a bit sad though and very lonely with only the worms to keep her company. She knows a lot about the worms and wants us to hold them. I don’t like them slimy things, but Fern often visits her to play with the worms and sing together.
Flaxine lives near the river in the harakeke bushes. She is very clever as she can make anything out of flax. Not just clothes, but also traps, bags, dog leashes and lots of other things. It is her MAGIC. We alwys go see her if we need anything special made. The best thing is though … She can make the best flax seed cookies ever. See if you can find the recipe.
Rata lives high in the Rimu tree. His rata vine lines reach the whole forest and with his MAGIC time viewer he can look back in time. That is the best thing ever. I wish to have a MAGIC like that. We often spend a lot of time watching things that happened days ,weeks or even years ago in the forest.
Rata is not allowed to watch the screen all the time as he needs to keep the communication lines open for his host Rimu.
Most of the time Rata travels through the trees. He jumps from tree to tree, real fast. He is not always that nice to me, but I love to hang out with him
Rocko is my hero. He is sooo strong, he can even lift a whole shed. He says he has to be strong to enter caves with glow-worms. He looks after the glow-worms , you see. He even has them on his back and in the night they are just little lights. So pretty. Rocko is nocturnal. That means he is awake at nights like the kiwi, bats and the glow-worms. So he sleeps during the day.
Still when Fern or I need him we can always call on him to help, which is great, because who doesn’t want a strong Bushbuddy as a friend. If we are lucky Rocko takes us in a cave and plays his rock-guitar. that sounds so amazing. He’s a real special Buddy.
Rimu is very old. He must be the oldest Bushbuddy I know. He can’t walk anymore as he is stuck in his tree. He can only move his arms and head and he is always tired. But he is very wise and knows everything that’s going on in the forest and the whole world , I think. That is because of Rata of course as he keeps Rimu up to date with all facts from his communication lines.
It doesn’t seem nice to get stuck in a tree like that, but still better than get stuck in the ground like Muddum. At least he has a view and a helper.
When Rimu sleeps you can’t see him at all and he’s not very nice if you wake him up with no good reason.
There are a lot more Bushbuddies around that you can meet in new books to come out. . Some of them will become real good friends as well, like Kiri Himete and Rubble and Tip , who are not really Bushbuddies but live in the forest as well. You can read about them in the book about the real christmas tree. There are some Bushbuddies that are not very nice at all and shouldn’t be called my friends like the evil witch Eucalypta, with her nasty helper Onga. We will have a scary adventure involving those ones